By Mike Palmedo, infojustice.org
http://infojustice.org/archives/29599
Today at 2pm EST, the House Judiciary Subcommittee
on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will hold the first
hearing to address copyright reform since the announcement
by Chairman Goodlatte of a comprehensive review of U.S. copyright law.
Prepared witness statements are available, and the hearing webcast will
be up on the hearing’s webpage.
This particular hearing will be based on the Report
of the Copyright Principles Project. This was a group of legal
academics and practitioners convened in 2007 by Pamela Samuelson at
Berkeley Law, which published its report in 2010 with 25 recommendations
for copyright reform. The witnesses – all of whom participated in the
project – will be Jon Baumgarten, Laura Gasaway, Daniel Gervais, Jule
Sigall, and Pamela Samuelson.
There is an acknowledgement that absurd penalties applied to
individual consumers undermines the system of copyright. Samuelson
notes that “grossly excessive statutory damage awards have contributed
to public disrespect for copyright law.” Gervais says that while
“’Professional’ pirates should be held accountable under the full force
of the law… Unauthorized use by individual users in their private sphere
(sometimes caused by misapprehension of, or lack of clarity about, the
scope of fair use) is a different matter.” Sigall suggests that a
DMCA-style “safe harbor for consumers, providing certainty that the
ordinary and reasonable personal use of legitimately purchased content
will be enabled, not stifled, by copyright.”